What Should Blizzard Learn From Shadowlands?

Lore Story Forum
41

That’s fair, but I find a lot of these Retcons to be more… maintenance rather than detrimental. With a game in an ever evolving world with a fluid story there will come times where a character may need to be tweaked, or some verbiage adjusted. Some of it will be more forced than others, like Illidan, however they have proved that they can make it work with a little bit of tact and creativity.

The issue with Shadowlands is the sheer lack of creativity. It’s boring and it’s change for the sake of change. The changes aren’t there to help the story along, they are there to change it entirely.

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42

Part of the reason the story is “fluid” is because of these clumsy, incessant retcons, but I think I see your point.

How can you tell if something’s “change for the sake of change”?

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43

I agree, I think we’re on the same page but we have a different way of looking at it. I’ll use the good example you brought up with Argus.

Using the Argus World Soul to fuel the Twisting Nether and essentially create this never ending, undying army of demons was a very clever take. Creatures from planes outside of Azeroth always typically followed two rules. They can not truly die on our plane and are sent back to theirs when defeated, and they are vulnerable in theirs. Having Argus twisted and contorted for Eons by Sargeras does flow with how the Legion operates. It was a Recton to how the Twisting Nether works, but it was more of an explanation. The two basic rules still applied, but now we know why they applied (more or less).

Now if we look at the Shadowlands and the Jailer…

The Legion? - The Jailer
Argus? - The Jailer
Arthas and the Scourge? - The Jailer
Sylvanas? - The Jailer
Dreadlords? - The Jailer
The Horde invading Azeroth? - The Jailer

And so on and so forth. While we could once trace threads back to the Legion, and confidently so, we now can trace directly back to the Jailer, because that’s just how it is now. As soon as he was the master mind manipulating the Legion, everything changed, and not necessarily for the better.

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44

I see. There are a few retcons like that, such as the origins of the Worgen, “Illidan - Champion of the Light” (then they flip-flopped again when he rejected that :weary:) and a similar retcon with the Void Lords to the one in Shadowlands… but none as expansive as Shadowlands’ retcons.

45

Demons still regenerate in the Twisting nether if they died outside of it. Hence why Sargeras and Aggramar created Mardum. A prison world in the Twisting Nether. They marked demonic souls so they would be forced to regenerate there instead of a random spot in the nether. So at least the whole “Demonic souls were anchored to Argus” didn’t come out of nowhere. Argus was also on the edge of the Twisting Nether and our reality. All Argus (the World soul) did was act as a battery to accelerate the regeneration. Without him, the Legion would wait a long time for their demons to respawn.

Which is why removing Argus from the equation would stop the infinite armies of the Legion from being “infinite” from a certain point of view. Sure killing a demon outside of the Nether doesn’t destroy them for good, but it will take a long time before they would show their ugly face again. That is better than killing them then seeing them again the next day.

Imagine being that one demon who was about to be reborn only to get “estimated resurrection time… 1000 years” the next second because Argus died.

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46

Funniest (most painful) thing is they had a “behind alot of stuff” villain in Nzoth who they killed off in a patch to introduce an awfully done version of his schemer type background with Zovaal

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47

I agree with this.

I think it’s important not to entirely shun retcons. The nature of WoW will inevitably necessitate them.

But I do think that the way that the plethora of retcons established in Shadowlands were handled was pretty poor.

That’s what should be shunned.

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48

I don’t really see why retcons are a necessity… If you want to write a new story but something in your own pre-established lore constitutes an obstacle to it, you don’t retcon that obstacle, you find ways around it. That’s your job as a writer

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49

Yes but if blizzard upheld that standard, then I don’t think wow, or even wc3 would have existed.

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50

I can see what you mean and I don’t think you’re entirely wrong at all.

In my opinion retcons shouldn’t be the default tool in the toolbox, but they should be in the toolbox.

I don’t think everything ever established is always going to be the best option and I’d rather Blizzard feel safe to adjust things if it’ll make them better overall - as opposed to committing to something just because it’s what was thought up 8 years ago.

Although, to reiterate, when retconning becomes the default tool used to align the story then I do think it can become very problematic.

I feel like Shadowlands speaks to that.

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51

Fair point I guess. I can see specific situations in which it can be a good option. It’s just that to me it’s sort of an inherently unhealthy tool because playing a game in which writers are prone to retcon means that what you’re doing, what you’re learning about the story, may eventually turn out vain and obsolete. Kinda makes it hard to care about that story in the first place

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52

I do think the whole “Oh, well this book was written from the Titan point of view” was … awkward might be a nice way to say it.

I will say however that even since Wrath, the Titans haven’t been portrayed as “Good” or “Evil” per se. Algalon’s monologue actually emphasizes this point and I think it makes Sargeras a bit better as a villain (in that it emphasizes that the Titans are willing to go to extreme lengths to prevent the corruption of the Void - he just went off the deep end).

What I don’t really understand is why they’ve gone to such lengths to make, “neutral” and “evil” factions, but they really have skipped out on “good.” I think they’ve made the statement that Void, Death, Life, etc are beyond morality - fine, I can accept that narrative - except that’s really not what we see.

Except from my point of view (take it for what it’s worth) that story doesn’t really seem to work without the opposite. The Titans help us, but they do pursue order, even at extreme costs. The followers of the Light can pursue extreme acts, but the Void doesn’t seem to ever act benevolent, neither do demons.

I’m not suggesting that one path or the other is preferable. I’m open to either (done well) but I would prefer to see consistency.

  • If some are evil and some are good - fine.
  • If some are evil, some good, and some neutral - fine.
  • If all of them are neutral - fine.

I just don’t see the amoral claim working if we only have neutral and evil, because it sure doesn’t feel consistent among the groups. Unfortunately, fixing that seems to necessitate either changing our understanding of some past events (I’ll avoid the dirty word of retcon) or adding some benevolence to what has been known as purely evil. Either of those would take some extremely difficult tightrope walking to make it even remotely plausible (if it’s even possible - which I’m not sure it is).

This also directly relates to the factions. It’s off-putting to see one faction consistently portrayed as the faction that is good, while the other can fluctuate between neutral (at best) and evil. I don’t think that works for the story but I definitely don’t think it works for the player base. As a Horde player, I’m often the antagonist of a story, or at best an accessory to the Alliance’s good guy narrative.

Even in an expansion not started by an overt act of war, the Horde races are almost entirely invalidated in their beliefs (Shamanism, Ancestral contact, etc) with only a small mention of Troll Loa. At this point they’ve dived so far down this rabbit hole though that I don’t know if it’s even possible to dig out of it.

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53

They do this with good entities too.

First it was the titans and the dragons they left behind with elune being this obscure entity.

Now we got First ones, eternal ones, god 3D printing machines.
Whats the next level? Primary ones and the consistent ones in the next expansion?

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54

K.I.S.S.: Keep It Simple Stupid.

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55

Now we just need a catchy slogan, because I don’t know if many folks will be chanting :

“We want K.I.S.S. from Blizzard Devs”

It seems some folks at Blizzard took that idea the wrong way.

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56

Quote for effect.

A lot of the community hasn’t accepted that between the age of the story and number of writers there isn’t a good way to entirely avoid retcons.

With the lack of specificity in broad swaths of the story there’s a ton of “inherited wisdom” about the “real meaning” of things in the story’s past.
With that, even if there might be an ok hook to use for the story, people in the community take the change to specificity for a plot purpose as a retcon.

Shadowlands is just such a mess. There isn’t art, or skill, to where we are now.

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57

They can’t avoid retconning lore of just a few years ago.
Now they have resolved calling it different perspective to justify it.

I remember Metzen retconning the Draenei origins but in my book thats alright if we want to expand the universe.

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58

LOL, careful, Shadowlands “expanded the universe”.

The quality of the result is the question. I don’t see people arguing Shadowlands is high quality story.

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59

Yes very true but I don’t think all sort of universe expansions are a good thing.
And yeah the quality is ultimately the final test and the only thing that matters.

60

They can’t avoid retconning lore from just a patch ago.

This is the problem I have with blizzards writing lately. They don’t plan things ahead. The story can change on a whim because of a voice actor or some writer thinks X is cool. Did we really need to change the Stonewrights backstory a patch later just to have a night warrior in Revendreth? Could’ve been a new character, maybe the new harvester of fear. One issue I have is that it was the Curator who corrected Renethal. Given that she can’t remember like 99% of things because of her torture in the maw.

This is why I reckon they had no idea what broke the Arbiter until they started to do 9.2. Then they just looked at the internet, saw one of the most outlandish and improbable theories and went, “yep that did it”. Then they refuse to actually explain HOW it came to be outside of the “dreadlords did it” meme.

Seriously, they basically did this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVgVB3qsySQ
Just replace wizard with Dreadlords.

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